


Heaven Hanging Over Me

by Masu_Trout



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Madokami, New World setting, Post-Series Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:32:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5802709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homura develops her own set of rituals to deal with Madoka's absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven Hanging Over Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaoticrandomness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticrandomness/gifts).



> This pairing. ♥

Madoka's room has become a study. There's a desk in the corner made of dark oak, a few potted plants sitting on the windowsill, and plush chairs set haphazardly to break up the empty space. 

Perhaps Madoka's mother uses this place to entertain coworkers, or perhaps it's some little workspace of her father's. Homura's not sure whether his life took a different path in this world, what with him having only one child to care for, and frankly she doesn't particularly care. The important thing is the shape of the room: when she closes her eyes she can imagine the furniture back into place, conjure up the ghost of Madoka's scent, run her hands along the walls and feel the memory of the checker-patterned wallpaper under her fingertips.

Homura's always been good at the art of self-delusion. (She'd even managed to convince herself she could save Madoka.) It's especially easy here, in the place the two of them once spent so much time together. 

In the first few timelines, when Homura was still a child, they'd mostly spent their time studying or playing together. Once she'd gotten serious, they'd spent more time training; she'd absorbed everything she could of battle tactics from Madoka with a desperate sort of urgency borne by the conviction that _this_ time could be the last.

(Eventually, she'd started trying to teach Madoka. It had never worked well, though—she didn't have the patience Madoka did, or even the coherence to explain her thought process out loud. It was one of the things she never managed to get right, no matter how many times she went around.)

Those memories, pleasant and awful alike, are probably why she keeps breaking in. It's a bad habit—even Kyoko finds it uncomfortable, and that girl lives off of breaking and entering—but she can't quite convince herself to stop. She's quiet, after all, and it's not like she'd take anything. The Kaname family is probably safer with her in the house. It's a desperate justification, and a pretty pathetic one at that, but it works for her.

She can hear the sheets of the bed across the hall rustle as Madoka's father twists and turns in his sleep. Madoka's mother snores loudly beside him; if Madoka's stories about her family are right, she probably has an arm thrown over her husband's face right now.

(“She's such a restless sleeper,” Madoka had said with a laugh. “I can always tell when she's especially stressed because Dad wakes up in the morning with the biggest bags under his eyes.”)

Homura's struck with a strange sudden desire to go look. Walk down the hall, slip into their room, and see for herself. They'd never have to know, she'd never have to say anything, she just needs to know that the voice she remembers was once someone real—

 _Oh,_ Homura thinks, a little despairingly, _I really am insane_.

She shakes the thought off. She's not actually so desperate that she'd watch a pair of virtual strangers sleeping just to prove something she already knows is true. Instead, she turns to the corner of the room where Madoka's bed once sat. Homura unties a plastic bag from the handle of her bow—it's frustrating sometimes, not having her shield's storage—and pulls out a small, slightly-squashed cake. 

“Sorry,” she says to the empty room. “I accidentally hit it against a wall coming here.”

Does Madoka know that already? How much can she see from wherever she is? 

“Well… happy birthday, anyway.” 

Homura opens the cake box and grabs a box of candles from the bottom of the bag, then shoves a few into the icing. They're the cheap sort, the kind that never burn properly, but a quick wave of her hand and a pulse from her soul gem sets them alight just fine.

It was supposed to be homemade. Madoka at least deserves that much. But after four atrocious tries Homura'd had to admit she was no Mami—for her, anything more complicated than a cold lunch is either storebought or inedible. 

For a long while, Homura just sits and watches the candles drip wax onto the cake. She hadn't really thought about what she'd do once she set this up; normally when she visits Madoka's room it's only a quick stop on her way to a wraith infestation, not near long enough for her to think about the horrid awkwardness of what she's doing.

It's different now. There's nowhere she needs to be but here, nothing she needs to do but this, and the only sounds around her are the soft noises of the melting wax and three sets of of breaths coming from down the hall.

Finally, the silence gets unbearable. 

“I'm doing all right,” Homura says. A lie, a barefaced lie, but it's not like that's anything unusual. “I've been trying to keep Sayaka stable, but that's been going about as well as it always does. You'll see her soon, I'm sure. Um.”

Another long pause fills the air as Homura's brain catches up to her mouth. Probably, just _probably_ , Madoka doesn't actually want to be discussing her best friend's impending death on her birthday.

“I miss you,” Homura admits. “I keep thinking about this one timeline—my seventh or eighth, I don't remember.” It had been long enough that she'd begun to realize befriending Madoka could only burden the girl further, but before she'd actually worked up the courage to stop depending on Madoka for comfort every time one of her plans went wrong.

“I messed up fighting Gretchen, and Mami died for it.” Ripped to pieces, if Homura remembers correctly. “I was such a wreck. I'm pretty sure I threw up.” She used to fall to pieces every time the slightest setback happened. It took her a long time to start seeing people as disposable, as tools to be used. To start realizing that _saving Madoka_ might have to mean _sacrificing someone else_. “And then I went running off to your house, because it was the only place I could think of to go.”

Even in the timelines where they never became friends—even in the timelines where Homura acted as an outright enemy—Madoka always reacted so kindly to finding a bedraggled, bleeding, and quite often crying girl on her doorstep. 

For that alone, Homura owes Madoka her life a thousand times over. If not for those short moments of safety and peace, snatched from the jaws of every one of her failures, she would certainly have given up.

“You held me,” Homura says quietly. She'd been smeared head-to-toe with Mami's blood and still Madoka hadn't hesitated for a moment. “You were shaking—you must have been so scared—but you held me.”

It seems a little sick to think on that night so fondly, but Homura treasures the memory all the same. The warmth of Madoka's body against hers, the silkiness of her pajamas, the way her soft hands grounded Homura and kept her from breaking completely even as her soul gem threatened to shatter under the weight of what she'd seen and done… 

She doesn't miss watching Madoka suffer, but she does miss the moments like those. Nowadays, with only a ribbon to remember her by, Homura often feels disconnected from everyone around her. The monsters they fight don't feel real, no matter how many of them Homura shoots down. Their victories feel hollow and their losses hardly seem worth mourning.

Madoka was the one who tethered her to this world, the one who gave her purpose. Without her, Homura can't help but think that one day she might float away completely.

Homura doesn't know how to say that, doesn't even have the slightest idea how to break those feelings down into words that Madoka might understand. (If she did, would she dare admit them out loud, even to an empty room?)

Instead, she leans in, watching the candlelight spill eerily across the shadowed walls. “I miss you,” she says. And then, a little softer, the words so raw and rough they catch on her throat as she speaks, “I love you. I hope I'll see you again soon.”

She leans down to blow the candles out—

And a warm breeze sweeps through the air, ruffling Homura's hair and the pleats of her dress. The room is plunged into darkness as every little flame goes out at once. Suddenly, Homura can feel gentle arms wrap around her once more. They brush her face, tug playfully at the ribbon in her hair, and clutch at the back of her dress before fading away as quickly as they appeared. 

For a moment, all Homura can do is sit there. Her mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. The spots where the ghostly sensations brushed against her feel strangely warm, like the imprints of a living person instead of a walking memory. When she presses her own fingers against them she can feel a faint heat radiating there still.

“Madoka,” Homura says finally. There's no other explanation, no one else it could possibly be; even she doesn't have imagination enough to make that up. “You're not even going to stay for cake?”

She's smiling, she realizes suddenly. It's an unfamiliar, long-forgotten sensation; her cheeks hurt from the force of it.

“Fine,” she says to an empty room that no longer feels quite so empty, “I'll just have some, then.”

Homura cuts herself a generous slice. It's soft, nearly crumbling, and the icing is half-melted from having the candles burning for so long. It almost collapses the moment she pulls the plastic knife back. She forgot to bring plates, so she picks a chunk up as gracefully as she can manage—which isn't very—and takes a bite of the end.

“Happy birthday, Madoka,” she says again through a mouthful of cake. Not very dignified, but it's probably the thought that counts.

The cake is covered in hardened wax and has the distinct aftertaste of mass production. Certainly it doesn't even come close to the kind of masterpieces Mami loves to create. 

Still, it's good. Homura takes another bite as she settles back against the wall, watching the lights of the city outside filter through the half-closed blinds.


End file.
